


buzzed

by roseisreturning



Category: Frasier (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternative Lifestyle Haircuts, Gen, LGBTQ Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 10:18:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14400084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseisreturning/pseuds/roseisreturning
Summary: After her disastrous haircut in 3x16, Daphne gives herself a buzzcut.





	buzzed

**Author's Note:**

> Niles is a lesbian, and her friendship with Daphne is important to this story, but it is ultimately about Daphne’s growth. Warnings for casual homophobia and misogyny, unhealthy parental relationships, and brief mention of sex. If you need any additional information before reading, feel free to message me on Tumblr @frasierlesbian.

Daphne can hardly imagine looking worse, her hair the kind of mess she’d always pictured it when her grandmother called it a mane. Dr. Crane, Daphne thinks, could do without dispensing advice for the next century, but she can think of only one way to feel right: to take a leap. She steps through the apartment door with a tear-stained face and a paper bag from the beauty supply store, not stopping until she’s locked herself in her bathroom.

The clippers are louder than she’d expected, thunderous in her hand and bombinating when they touch her head. Daphne has never felt quite so alive as in this moment, watching her hair fall to the terry cloth bath mat before the mirror. It muddies the rainbow in it, falls to the tile, scratches the back of her neck. It’s gone. Daphne’s never been the kind of woman to say she feels reborn—words like that are for what’s important, not cutting your hair or kissing your flatmate or even moving halfway across the world—but when she sees herself standing there, perfectly alone for what feels like the first time in her life, not half an inch of hair left on her head, there is no other word for it: Daphne feels reborn. She runs a hand across the top of her newly buzzed hair, delighting in the feeling of it, the way it seems to run down her spine, a rush all its own, and steps into the shower. She supposes there’s a kind of symbolism in that, a baptism of sorts, but dismisses the idea as quickly as it comes; one too many conversations with the Drs. Crane will have anyone thinking the strangest things.

She tries to call her mother in the morning, five o’clock her time and surely full of its own implications. She comes close, though, even picks up the phone, but knows already what she will say. (“Men weren’t exactly lining up for you before, dear, and at this age, well— I wish you luck, Daphne, I really do.”) The thought is enough to make her lose her nerve.

Mr. Crane doesn’t say a word about it, at least, not that morning and not any time after it, but Daphne sees the way he catches him by surprise. It’s what she does, she knows, give the Cranes something to talk about. Daphne leaves for coffee before Dr. Crane, still in his dressing gown, has the chance to tell her what he thinks.

When Roz sees her there, the first thing she says—eyes wide, arms outstretched—is, “Are you all right?”

And Daphne laughs, of course, because she means well, and says, “Why d’you ask?”

“Why do I ask?” Roz has lost none of her concern, and reaches urgently for Daphne’s arm, as if to awaken her. “You’ve got my last boyfriend’s haircut.”

“Well, there you are,” Daphne says. “I was hoping you’d be missing him one night and…”

It’s a joke, and Roz knows it, laughs before Daphne can even finish making it, but the barista asks them whether they’re paying together in an intonation she didn’t use a week ago. Daphne isn’t sure she minds.

Something else new happens, too, or doesn’t: Men stop asking Daphne on dates. It takes a while to notice, but she catches a stare in the grocery that first week which makes sense only later. The man looks nice enough, well-dressed in an easier way than either Dr. Crane, with spectacularly curly hair. But when Daphne meets his gaze, she doesn’t find any of the kindness she’s used to, and he looks away like he’s been caught. As easily as this, Daphne Moon becomes a woman men can’t stand to look at. It’s strange, how much pride she feels in that. It’s strange, how much pride she feels when Dr. Crane—just the one, that is, the sister—can.

She doesn’t at first, not when Daphne emerges in her bathrobe thinking all the guests gone for the night. Her brother nowhere in sight, she gives Daphne the most fleeting of smiles and says, “Frasier told me you’d cut your hair. I have to say, it’s quite the improvement from the last time I saw you.”

But she isn’t even looking at her haircut, just at that fluffy pink bathrobe. Daphne moves closer to her.

“I hope you don’t mind my saying,” she says, “but you don’t seem terribly pleased about it.”

“Your haircut?” she asks. “I’m— I can’t tell you how happy I am for you, Daphne.“

This surprises her, though not so much as her happiness at it. Daphne says, “Are you?”

“Of course. I haven’t forgotten the first time I cut mine. It was never so short as yours, and I would never have done it myself, but the feeling of it... It’s indescribable.”

“It is.” At last, Dr. Crane allows herself to look at more than just her bathrobe, and Daphne feels certain in her instinct that her usual sadness has grown. “You know,” Daphne tells her, drawing her hand out toward Dr. Crane’s, “you’re the only person who’s had one nice thing to say about my hair.”

Dr. Crane seems to flinch at the touch before it even occurs. Eyes searching for anything but Daphne, she says, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s not your fault. But I’ve got a secret I’d like to share with you.”

“Have you?”

“Oh, yes. Just don’t move away this time. I’m going to take your hand“—she does so—“just like that, and—oh!” Dr. Crane has woven their hands together, missing the point of the gesture entirely, and Daphne laughs. “Maybe not quite like that,” she says. Dr. Crane laughs, too, pulls her hand anxiously away until Daphne takes it once more, her thumb in her palm, waiting. Daphne says, “And I know you’re a bit nervous about these things, but I’ve just washed my hair, so I hope you don’t mind, but…” She says nothing else but guides her hand to the top of her head.

“Oh!” She laughs—the genuine kind that Daphne hardly ever hears from her, and Daphne laughs, too.

“Isn’t it fun?”

“Yes, I—“

Her brother reappears behind her, pauses, then says, “Niles?”

“Oh!” Dr. Crane’s hand darts from Daphne’s head, and she seems to hesitate before speaking again. “I was just telling Daphne how much I admire her haircut.”

“I’m sure you do.”

It’s the closest he comes to kindness about Daphne’s hair for two weeks. He compliments it for the first time then, though it’s a terrible mess, and Daphne takes the clippers to her head twelve hours later. Her hair’s grown back faster than Daphne anticipated, feather-soft and curling in strange places, and the compliment means that he’s noticed, too.

It becomes a sort of ritual after that, every other Sunday night, touching up the buzzcut that only she loves. She loves new things about herself, too, with the hair all gone: her eyes, the freckles on her scalp, and even her cheeks. There’s no hiding any of it now; like the patterns on her dresses, everything seems suddenly more vibrant, more like some kind of assertion. Daphne doesn’t know what she’s saying just yet—she hardly ever does, if she’s honest—but there’s something in the way she does that makes her feel impossibly real.

Here is what doesn’t change: her visions, her excitement at the rare sunny day, and, apparently, even after five years, Clive’s love for her. When he shows up, right on time, Daphne swears he takes a step backward. And when Daphne laughs, tells him how clear it is he hasn’t changed, he says, “Seems you have, though.”

Dr. Crane steps into the room, and Daphne takes her by the arm the way she did at the Snow Ball. “Clive,” she says, desperate to make Clive see that they could never reunite, “I’d like you to meet my girlfriend, Dr. Niles Crane.”

Dumbstruck, Clive says, “Girlfriend. You _really_ have.”

Dr. Crane— _Niles,_ Daphne supposes, if she’s going along with her own lie—laughs. “Oh, well,” she says, “they do say that love is transformative. And we’re terribly in love.”

Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth; Dr. Crane is becoming a wonderful friend to Daphne, but Daphne is hardly the kind of woman she would fall in love with. Still, they sit down together, just after Clive has left, and compose a letter to Daphne’s mother. It comes out—and she does, incidentally—all at once, the way her hair fell to the floor, tangled and uneven, and Dr. Crane writes it all down. At last, Daphne exhales and says, “How was that?”

Dr. Crane leafs through the letter, then gives Daphne a faint smile. “Better than mine,” she says.

“You wrote a letter when you cut your hair?”

“No, no, that was a surprise.” She sighs, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose as she scans her immaculate writing. “I suppose you’ve bested me there, too,” she says, “but I was referring to your words here, um, ‘And before you ask, I am—‘ Oh, well, it’s a bit vulgar, so you might revise that, but it’s certainly straightforward.”

Daphne leans in to get a better look at the letter, and, were in anybody else, she’d be sure Dr. Crane “Where was that?”

“Right here,” she says, thumb tracing the spot, “before you list your”—Dr. Crane clears her throat—“six most recent sexual partners.”

“I forgot about that. Are all these pages just what I’ve said?”

“Just two through five. The first appears to be some kind of grocery list. Is this—?” A look of horror crosses Dr. Crane’s face as she glances over it. “You can’t be buying Franzia.”

“Talk to your brother, then. It’s not my first choice either, but not all of us can afford seven hundred dollars a bottle.”

“And after that scandal—“

“Oh, just give me the letter.”

She does, and Daphne reads it over in full before speaking again.

At last, she grins and says, “Oh, she’ll love to read that.” A breath. “I think we should send it.”

“You know, Daphne, you don’t need to tell her this.” Hesitant, Dr. Crane holds her quivering hand centimeters above her knee, then reaches it out to Daphne’s. “You don’t need to tell her anything you don’t want her to know.”

“Do you regret what you said to your parents?”

“I said quite a bit less than you.”

“Oh, come on.” Daphne nudges her unthinkingly, and Dr. Crane seems to forget what to do with her hands the moment she feels it. Daphne waits, searching fruitlessly for some indication as to why, then continues: “I know you can be a touch mealymouthed sometimes, but it’s all the same, really. There’s no difference in what I said and the way you talk about women—all those geographical metaphors. It’s all sex in the end.”

Dr. Crane becomes suddenly enthralled by the grocery list. “Yes, well, I suppose you’re right. So—“

“You didn’t answer my question, Dr. Crane.”

And she puts off answering it for as long as she can, until she admits that, yes, sometimes she does, until she smiles in a way not altogether sad and says, “You know, it’s harder to find something I don’t.”

Buzz just fading from her coffee and compassion, Dr. Crane leaves with the letter and a promise to send it. Daphne, alone once more, takes the clippers to her head for the seventh time of hundreds.


End file.
